15 Stories That Prove Parenting Is Not for the Faint of Heart

Parenthood is often called the toughest job in the world—and for good reason. It’s a round-the-clock commitment that lasts for years. Welcoming a child into the family transforms every aspect of life, turning routines upside down and reshaping priorities in ways most never expect. Sometimes with hilarious results.

• First day as a nanny to a 12-year-old girl with a few development issues (adopted by her folks at age 2 from an orphanage). I'd say she's at about a 1st grade reading level, very friendly, very conversational, a little goofy. I'm driving the minivan; she's in the back when she asks, “Hey, Mr_Tibbs, Mommy and Daddy can't have babies on their own, right? That's why they adopted me, right? They can't make babies.”
  “Yup, they adopted you.”
  “So, why are they still TRYING to make babies?” © Mr_Tibbs / Reddit
• I was walking home from the bus stop and saw the little (3-4 years old) neighbor kid squatting in his yard, but I couldn't really tell what he was doing. So I shouted to him to ask. He responded, “I'm pooping out here; this way no one inside can smell it.” © thewormauger / Reddit
• So my friend is sitting on the underground in London, and there's a young mother with her son. He's around 4 or 5. Apparently this kid is being kind of annoying, making noises, running around, etc. Eventually, the mother loses her cool and shouts at the boy, loudly.
  There's a moment of silence; most of the people on the carriage were watching this kid, so they all heard her. For a second, it looks like the kid is about to start bawling, but instead he turns, looks his mother straight in the eye, and says, “Are you proud of yourself?” © Unknown author / Reddit

• I met my future wife. After living together, I realized that she was the one. I proposed to her. Before starting wedding arrangements, we discussed our life together in detail: family, career, money, and even our actions in case of divorce. To give birth, my wife had to go through 9 circles of misfortune: miscarriage, depression, diagnoses of “infertility,” endless doctors, pregnancy, endless stress, and difficult childbirth.
  We were lucky and had a wonderful, healthy baby. I held my wife's hand when she gave birth. In the first days, our hearts sank with the baby's every sneeze. My wife had postpartum depression. Sleepless nights, breast refusal, hospital, fear.
  Did we ever regret that we got into all this? No! Do I want more children? I do! Would I ask my wife to go through all this again? Never! © BLAHAJ / Pikabu
• My distant relatives have a daughter who, as a child, could go 2 or 3 days without eating if her parents refused to fulfill some of her whims. The parents didn't try to compromise and just waited until the girl was hungry enough to eat a bowl of soup. But since they continued to spoil the girl and indulged some of her whims, the same thing happened again, again, and again. Eventually this passed, but she developed new, sophisticated manipulation techniques, such as running away. © Singing Coon / ADME
• When my kid was 3, we were talking a walk, and all of a sudden he started pointing and yelling, “Mum, mum, look!”. I see a man in a wheelchair heading towards us. I already know he's going to say something inappropriate about the man being in a chair with wheels, so I get my “Kids say the oddest things” look ready on my face. As we start to pass the man, sure enough my boy starts saying, “Mum, mum” and then in his loudest voice he says, “That man is really, really fat.” © rekgreen / Reddit

• So my dad is laying on the couch watching the Sunday game, and my mother is busy in the kitchen preparing something for dinner. I won't leave her alone, so she grabs something off the counter for me to play with.
  So what do I do? I excitedly prance over to Daddy with my new toy and decide to show it to him by winding up and bringing it down as hard as I can on his forehead. BAM. He of course starts screaming and steals it from me, telling my mother, “Why would you give him a meat tenderizer!?” He spent the next week going to college with a grid-pattern imprinted in his forehead. © Seligas / Reddit
• When I was a kid (1), I was with my sister (4) on the bed. My Mum was ironing clothes. She needed to put the iron away and told my sister to watch me while she went into the closet. After about 30 seconds, there is a loud thud and the sound of crying. My mother runs back in, wondering what happened.
  My sister calmly replies, “I watched him fall off the bed.” © sedated_peon / Reddit
• Our firstborn was about 18 months. Walking, but not that agile. I was downstairs on the computer, and the wife yelled down that she was using the bathroom and for me to watch him. We misunderstood each other, so he was alone for about 3 minutes. She comes out asking where he is, and he is nowhere to be found in the house.
  Thinking he's just hiding, we start a full search, only to notice the back patio door is slightly open after a few minutes of hunting. Growing concern at this point, but figuring he just snuck out back. A full search of the fenced/gated yard shows nothing. Now the heartbeat is going.
  Start running out and down the street. Find him 2 blocks down. He was heading to the park, which would have required crossing 2 roads, one of which was a busy one. Nice neighbors found him and were walking him home, as they'd recognized us from previous walks. Needless to say, child locks went on all the doors in the house after that. © Rancethetank / Reddit

• The time I shaved off my eyebrows. I saw my mom using an eyebrow razor in the mirror when I was 6. When she left the bathroom, I snuck in there and pretty much shaved both of mine off completely. I was satisfied to do something grown up women do.
  My mom freaked out when she saw me and was pretty mad. She had to pencil in my eyebrows for school every day until they grew back. Unfortunately, being six I didn’t have a shred of vanity in my body, so I still played super hard on the playground. When she’d pick me up from school, there’d be eyebrow liner running all over my face, smeared all around, and looking nuts. © cielingkat / Reddit
• When we went out to eat, and I had finished, I guess I would demand that we leave right away. I would threaten them with “frowing up” if this demand was not met. I guess I could regurgitate at will. It’s been captured on film one time. I can be seen going through the process of slowly driving my recently finished meal up my esophagus toward my mouth, where I would then give a final warning before expelling the vomit in protest.
  I guess I would do this all the time. What a pain I was. So now, anytime we get together for family dinners, I get asked, “Are you gonna “frow up?” © BW900 / Reddit
• When I was 2 or 3, my brother (13 years my senior) was to watch me while I was playing outside. He was less than diligent in his duties. I apparently snuck through the fence onto a dairy farm. I was chasing a bull saying, “here kitty, kitty, kitty.” You see, my family had a cat, and at that age, I called all animals “kitty.”
  My mother came outside and asked my brother where I was. She saw me in the field. She ran, got me, and my brother was gone before she got back. © ilmryr_maori / Reddit

• I was a late bloomer and did not speak one word besides “Dada” for the longest time. When I was about 20 months old, my parents pulled into the driveway. From the backseat of the car, I supposedly said very clearly and loudly, “Home again, home again, jiggity jig!” This was from a nursery rhyme that they would recite every time we drove home.
  They tell me now how completely disturbing it was to hear me suddenly speak a full sentence in my robotic little voice. And also that “you haven't shut up since.” © horrorshowalex/Reddit
• My husband and I have been married for 10 years, and have a 4-year-old. When our son takes a bath, I usually clean the bathroom while he gets to play in the water. This is our usual routine, so his tub-time is 20 minutes or so.
  Once, I wasn't in the mood, so I bathed him, and asked him to come out quicker. I had a bit of a migraine and wanted to rest, so he got just 5 minutes in the bath. He responded with, “Maybe you should just clean the bathroom. Why are you being so lazy?” Clearly, things need to change at home.
• My wife called me during a major meeting to inform me of something VERY important. She was in the shower when our 4-year-old son woke up. He climbed up the kitchen counter, got into the freezer, took out a tub of ice cream, and proceeded to pee in it. When asked why, he stated very clearly, “Vanilla ice cream is bad. Only chocolate from now.” He learned the meaning of 'actions have consequences' that day and didn't get ice cream for a week.

While we may find these anecdotes amusing, they must have earned the parents more than a few gray hairs. Here are some more gems uttered by children that show parenting can be a hilariously rocky ride.